Benny Lewis gave us a bunch of simple, yet very useful tips on how to learn languages.

He knows very well what he is talking about: at the age of 21 he spoke only English — now he speaks more than 12 languages. Today the author of Fluent in 3 Months is one of the most famous polyglots in the world!

Watch our interview from Polyglot Gathering Berlin 2015 and find out:

when to start speaking a language

how to make learning your leisure activity

why it is important to make mistakes

how to immerse in a new culture without leaving your country

whether one size fits all when it comes to learning methods

VocApp.com: Hi Benny, I’m very, very happy that you managed to find time for us. I perfectly know who you are, but can you please just start by telling our viewers who you are and what you do, and why we are so happy that we managed to meet here.

Pick up helpful tips on learning languages from the author of BrazilianGringo.com, who speaks 5 languages. In this first episode of our interview series with known polyglots, Meaghan asks Josh (among other things) about:

what works & what doesn’t?

how long does it take to learn a language?

how can you immerse yourself into a language without leaving your country?

how can you reduce a foreign accent (or actually get the native one)?

Tip: if you are not an English native speaker, you can use this interview as an interesting learning material – the video contains subtitles.

Meaghan: Hi, my name is Meaghan, and today I will be talking with Josh Plotkin. Josh runs a website and blog at BrazilianGringo.com. His website helps non-Brazilians learn Portuguese and gives tip on surviving in Brazil. Thank you, Josh, so much for talking with me today. How are you?

Gabriel Wyner is the author of “Fluent Forever – How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It”. I have to admit that the title gets straight to the point. No more, no less. For me it was kind of an epiphany.

Here, at VocApp.com, we are deeply impressed by Gabriel and want to make our platform as compatible with his methodology as possible — to a much greater extent than Anki or other spaced repetition systems. Watch our interview with Gabriel. We will ask him about:

Do you know that an average English text in more than 80% consists of the 1000 most common words? It means knowing these words you already know 8-9 words in every 10 words! And the remaining one or two are often quite easy to guess from the context.

The best part is that you can learn these 1000 words in 30 days spending only 20-30 minutes a day, completly for free. And with minimal effort you will never forget them!

I don’t even know his name but he looks very familiar to me – good old Hagrid from Harry Potter? Robin Williams from Good Will Hunting? Robinson Crusoe? John the Baptist? Karl Marx? Fidel Castro?

But the name really doesn’t matter. So what matters? His brilliant teaching skills, sense of humor, nice stories and perfect British accent. And what is the most impressive — except his beard — is his consistency. He publishes at least one new video every day (from hospital, his forest, kitchen, pub, bathroom…). He has already published more than 2,500 videos for 3 years.